Lucy
by syrrah
Summary: Written for the To Kill A Cullen challenge. "How do you know so much about history?" he asked. "It's a special interest of mine - well, history and mythology," she answered. No Bella. Edward and OC.


Warning: Bella-free zone!

**Title: Lucy  
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**Penname(s): Syrrah  
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**Rating: T  
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**Disclaimer: All recognizable characters property of Stephenie Meyer  
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**Summary: "How do you know so much about history?" Edward asked. "It's my special interest. History and mythology," she replied.  
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**Submitted for the 'To Kill a Cullen' Contest**

**Please check out the other entries here :**

**http://www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/community/To_Kill_a_Cullen_Contest_Community/76759/**

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Lucy

The new girl is exceptionally tall. She must be six foot. And she's not skinny, she's built like an oak tree or a grid iron player. She eyes the teachers and the students with exactly the same look, appraising, but not finding herself in need of conceding anything. If she was under arrest she'd probably look at the police with the same expression.

She saunters with a grace born of utter confidence. She's unbelievable. Not a single soul dares to speak to her.

Everybody has been recipient to her ice-chip blue gaze, and quailed. On her third day she approaches the Cullens at their table in the lunch room and she addresses Edward, the youngest. He is the handsomest boy in school and the most reknowned loner.

"How tall are you?" she asks him bluntly. Her question hangs in sudden silence, as everyone in the room has become quiet. There are teachers in there on duty, and even they have turned incredulously to listen. In living memory, no girl has ever approached Edward Cullen and asked him a question without stammering.

He looks at her and seems to consider. His eyes don't leave her face, he doesn't gaze up and down, he has an aplomb that is unstartled by hers, although his is different, more inward, more self-contained.

"Six-two," he says at last, making no move to stand up and prove it.

"Good," she says. "Because I never go for boys who are shorter than me."

She walks away from him, leaving him gazing inscrutably after her. Her pleated skirt is so short it shows a liberal expanse of strong white thigh, inky hair swings over her shoulders, rippling to her waist, her lower legs are encased in knee-high boots, and no other girl in the school wears such clothes. Everyone stares.

It turns out she and Edward are both taking ancient history, and they sit at the same bench.

"I think we should get together outside of school. I like to know who I'm dealing with," she says to him, raising one elegant eyebrow. He raises an eyebrow back.

"Certainly," he says. "The museum?"

"Relics and artifacts and dust and bones. Why not?" she answers. "My name is Lucy."

They meet on Saturday afternoon and scrutinize the exhibits in the town's small museum. She argues with him about the origins of things.

"How do you know so much history?" he asks her, not having to tilt his head to her as he normally does with girls because she is so huge. She is the first girl he can look in the eye.

"It's a special interest of mine. History and mythology. Where can we go now?" she says and he is at a loss because he doesn't date, he doesn't know where to take girls.

"I'm sorry, I have to go home," he says, mind blank. He can't date, anyway. He has no idea why he agreed to meet her. He is not like the other boys, and clearly she is not like the other girls, but it is not the same thing.

"Fine. See you," she says, and turns away from him. It is the second time she's done that. He watches her go, square shoulders and high head.

"Wait. Do you need a ride home?" he asks, catching up with her.

"No," she says, and smirks a little. "I ran here. I"m going to run home."

"You _ran_?"

"Yes, boy. I ran. I like your hair," and she's gone, hair like a horse's tail streaming out behind her, strong legs pounding the pavement, hips slim like a man's, not womanly, although in the tight tops she wears her breasts are all the woman a man could ever want.

He's really confused now, she's run away from him, but she said she liked his hair. All the girls like his hair. He's very vain, although he pretends not to be, and he spends a lot of time on his hair, even though he has never liked any of the girls at school. He still doesn't, although one of them has started to intrigue him.

"I can't work her out," he says to his family. "There's something really unusual about her. She makes me feel a little uneasy."

His sister and brother exchange looks. One of them is the family's own private oracle, one is an intuit.

"I know what you mean," they both say, but no-one can elaborate.

There are seven in his family, and they keep themselves all together apart. Their house is out of town a little ways and they have deliberately not made friends in the community. They have to be very careful. It is a secret in the area, but the family all carry a virus which is transmittable by exchange of bodily fluids, and it is lethal to the general population. They are not even a real family - they are some of the few individuals amongst humanity who have contracted the virus and not been killed by it. As they carry it, they must maintain a distance from others, or risk killing. Six of them are in pairs, but poor Edward is the seventh, and has been alone since he first contracted the condition. He cannot date, because he cannot kiss. He will probably never make love, although the man who calls himself their father has done medical training and is conducting extensive research in an attempt to find some sort of answer for them all.

Edward cannot get any closer to Lucy, but Lucy tries to get closer to Edward.

"Would you like to come to my house for a meal?" she asks him.

"I'm sorry, but no. I suffer from extensive allergies and I am on a very restricted diet. I never eat away from home."

Her eyes narrow. "Would you like to come swimming?"

He can't - for one thing, his body bears evidence of his strange condition, his skin doesn't look like other people's, and for another thing, he doesn't want to see her in a swimsuit. He can picture it already, she is so toned, she probably looks like an Olympian, legs up to her armpits and those beckoning breasts. He doesn't want to see her wet because he might want to touch her, and he can't.

"I don't swim. Part of my allergies manifest as a skin condition."

"Aren't you just the boy in the bubble? How about horse-riding?"

He has no more excuses. He doesn't want to keep having excuses. He wants to see her. He is drawn. In class she is very smart, and challenges the teachers. He is the only person not intimidated by her.

"Yes, horse-riding would be okay. I'm not allergic to horses," he says at last. "Shall I pick you up or will you run there?"

It is the first time she has ever laughed and he is stunned at the difference in her face. It shines. Her laugh is deep and hearty and infectious and he laughs too.

"Yes, boy, you can pick me up," she grins.

At the ranch, she is asked for her level of experience and she says high and they offer her a solid looking gelding with wise eyes but she shakes her head and walks past and stops in front of a nervous, wild-eyed beast tossing its head and mane and looking as though foam will fleck from its mouth and it will bolt the first chance it gets. She breathes into its nostrils and hisses and hums to it and says, "I'll take this one."

"You'll have to sign an indemnity," the proprietor says nervously, as Lucy pulls the horse's face down to hers and rubs her nose over the jagged white blaze running from beneath its forelock. As soon as she throws one leg easily over the saddle it's obvious the word high was an understatement. She rides like she's part of the horse. Like she's a centaur.

Edward can ride well, and is given a lively mare, spirited and dancing. Her name is Lucy, and they all smile at the coincidence. Lucy's horse is called Django.

They have two hours and Lucy handles Django unerringly. He does attempt to bolt, his own shadow threatens him and he skitters sideways like a crab, but even without a tight rein Lucy croons and murmurs, and manages him. She has brought food, which Edward refuses, and she sways easily in the saddle, tearing at a chicken leg and an apple and a hunk of bread with relish. He wonders what her other appetites are like, and he feels awkward and embarrassed.

"I can't tempt you with anything?" she says, and he shakes his head. She is being ambiguous.

"You _are_ restricted, aren't you?"

When he drops her at her house later she smiles with her hand on the door handle.

"Would you like to come in?" she asks softly.

Edwards knows he shouldn't, but he is very lonely, and has been so for years. This girl makes him feel even more lonely. He has never before desired what he cannot have. He doesn't want to torture himself, but convinces himself he can handle it. His options are to throw himself at her and hope he can pull back when he needs to, to take things slowly and hope he can pull back when he needs to, or denial. He doesn't want to choose any of them, he wants immersion. For the first time, he curses his condition. It actually has advantages - for instance he cannot fall ill and he doesn't need to sleep - but right now he would exchange all its advantages for a few hours of being unafflicted and normal.

"I beg your pardon?" she asks, at his self-directed invective.

"Yes, I would like to come in," he answers, walking around to open the door for her. She is already out, and laughing at him. He can be very quick, but she is quicker.

Inside, she dances around, showing him things. He has never seen her playful. It is intoxicating. At school her occasional sarcasm is the only indication of a sense of humor, but now she teases him and laughs, and yes, she is definitely flirting.

"So if you have a skin condition you're not on the swimming squad. Do you play any other sports? When do I get to see you in tight clothes? Please tell me you're a ballet dancer," she says, disappearing round a corner. He follows, helpless.

Halfway up a flight of stairs in front of him, she offers, "Would you like to see my bedroom?" and then shakes her head as he catches his breath. "No, of course not, silly me, boys aren't interested in girls' bedrooms. Boys don't like pink," and she has skipped off again. She slips past him somehow, and is back downstairs with him not knowing how she got there.

"A glass of water? Orange juice? Beer? Or are you an airitarian? Just what is your special diet anyway?"

Finally she stops, and sinks into a couch. "Tell me everything," she commands.

He can't possibly - everything is far too big a word. But he tells her a few things, and for Edward, he is loquacious. He is adopted, his adoptive parents are unexpectedly young, he was born in Chicago, he plays the piano - he attempts to connect random facts and produces a story she listens to with rapt attention.

Then, "What about you?" he asks, and she relates a few facts as well, he can't really listen much as he'd like to, because she has taken his hand. He has never held hands with a girl. He can't imagine himself letting her go.

"You have artist's fingers," she says. "I know cheiromancy. Would you like me to read your fortune?"

He couldn't say no, unless she asked if he wanted to go home.

"I don't believe in it, but sure," he replies, as long as she keeps touching him.

"Hmm," she says, poring over his palm, tracing the lines with a short fingernail. It's electric.

"Ah," she adds.

"Madam Clairvoyant, what do you see?" he asks.

"You're going to meet a beautiful and mysterious girl very soon, who will have a profound effect on your life - hang on, wait, let me just work out the time line - actually you've already met her. Recently."

Lucy looks up at him, blue eyes, white skin, lashes of charcoal, pert tip-tilted nose.

"And you have a very long thumb," she whispers. He would snatch his hand back if he had the power to do so, but he lacks it. Her irises are light, like aquamarine.

"You know I can tell how long you're going to live?" she asks, and this is very interesting, because there is a lack of fatality to the condition he and his family suffer from. He doesn't believe any of what she says for a minute, but he is curious.

"Okay, so tell me," he challenges.

"Well, that's weird, it's not clear. You're either going to die young, and live forever, or live young and die forever, I can't tell. Now the session's over. Predicitons tire me. Are you sure there's nothing I can offer you?"

He has to go home. If he doesn't....

"I should get going," he says. He can't see her again. Only the tiniest percentage of the population cannot be killed by the condition he carries, and if he so much as kisses her she will be exposed to his virus, and there are only two outcomes. One is her imminent death. The other is that she will become like him, and then she could be his, but would she want to be? He has no idea why she is coming on to him the way she is. What if she only wants him for a night? Or a week? What if he is just a conquest? What if she is only attracted to him because he is tall, as she said that day in the lunchroom? He wonders if he could get a sample of her dna, if he could steal her toothbrush, or find a strand of hair on a comb, and take these things to his father to analyze. An apple core, a glass she has drunk from. Could his father tell him whether she is one of the few in a billion to withstand his contagion?

"Thanks for today. It was a pleasure," she says, standing up, running her hands down her hips, smoothing out her jeans. She is provocative. He wants to run _his_ hands down her hips, and she knows it.

"Perhaps I could come to your place sometime. You know, to study," she purrs, showing him out. She puts a hand on his shoulder. If she was on tiptoes she'd be above him. "There are one or two areas we could work on."

He shrugs and floats to his car. He can't invite her home. His family is too different.

"You're very taken by this girl, Edward. What is it about her?" his mother Esme asks, his distraction being so obvious.

"I don't know," he answers with a wordless, eloquent shrug. His whole family exchange glances. They all know of his profound loneliness. They all wish he could find a mate. Perhaps their father could do something?

"Is there a vaccine? Could you make her immune to me somehow? Or could we make her like us?" Edward asks him.

"I don't know. She'd have to want it. You'd have to be very sure, Edward," their father says. He has a few ideas about what could be done, and has been waiting for this day. It has taken a long time in coming. Edward has never wanted anybody.

"Can I bring her around?" Edward asks.

"Yes, I would like to meet her," his father nods.

And so a couple of days later when Edward sees Lucy in school he asks her to his house.

"I'd love to come," she whispers to his cheek. He can't be sure, she might have kissed him, it might have been her mouth giving him the softest touch there, or was it the gentle brush of her cheek? He is scorched.

They both have to wait for the weekend. She has a collection of the micro skirts she wears and in class she nudges him with her knee, drawing his attention to the milky thighs. She takes off her jacket and he sees some sort of intricate metal band above her bicep, something primitive that accentuates her arm and her strength. He wants to sniff at her, dizzily breathing her in.

"I have tattoos," she confides, when he tries to concentrate. "I can't show you where. Not now, anyway."

The weekend is years away and he walks on a razor's edge, a slip either way will cost him his life. The serrated teeth of disappointment will gut him and he'll bleed to death on the altar of hope and despair, each acute, each raging within him. He hopes she won't change her mind about Saturday. He hopes his family will accept her. He despairs that he won't be able to tell her anything, that his situation is insurmountable, that no girl on earth would listen to him favorably and agree to a jab in the arm for love. Is it love? Catch my disease and tell me you want me.

On Saturday he collects her at her house.

"Where are your parents?" he asks. "Don't they want to meet me? Some strange guy taking their daughter away?"

"Oh, I told them all about you," she says. As if she could.

His home is large and airy and spacious and actually a little cold, although none of them know it, because they don't feel temperature the way normal people do.

Lucy walks about, looking through their windows and looking at their walls and seeing the outside and the inside space and he is trembling with how much he wants.

One brother and sister are out actually, hiking, as this is a place of trees and valleys, verdant and conducive to hyper-awareness, an animalistic mind condition. It involves unwilled focus on one's surroundings and sublimation of the ego, and is an ideal state for carnivores to hunt prey. He and his family need to slip into this state in order to eat, or perhaps more accurately to feed. They really are not like ordinary people. There are a few things he will need to work himself up to telling her about himself and his family, depending on how today goes.

His parents and other two siblings are waiting, the four of them. He makes the introductions. They start in the kitchen, and progress to one of the living rooms. It is a very big house. This room houses a piano and other instruments.

"How lovely," Lucy says, trailing her fingers across harp strings, calling forth a delicate waterfall of notes.

They move to another room, and covering one wall is a display of weaponry.

"Oh," Lucy says, staring. "I wasn't expecting this." There are swords and daggers, blades bright and merciless, hungry things that know how to injure and maim. All for the offense, nothing that is meant to shield or protect or defend. It is a bit imposing, Edward has to admit.

"Some of these look quite ancient," she remarks, as though she's trying to find a polite comment. On a hook there are three silver rings, about ten inches across, which she picks up.

"Careful!" Edward says urgently. The outer edges of the rings are razor-thin - these are murder weapons. She could hurt herself. Lucy separates one and appears to weigh it in her hand.

"Very nice," she shrugs, and then the impossible happens. His oracular sister screams, but the silver ring has left Lucy's hand quicker than a flash of lightning, and his mother's head drops, severed, thumping dully onto the floor. There is an eruption of crimson, spurting, ejaculating from her neck. Her body still stands, it has happened so fast. Almost before Edward has registered it a second silver flash cuts off his sister's voice, her head toppling too. The bodies fold in slow motion, in a beautiful, vivid river and his brother and father take action, leaping at Lucy, the girl he brought home.

She is so fast, she has snatched the two-headed Cretan axe and she smiles as they come at her.

"Oh, Labrys, dance for me," she whispers, and starts to spin. She is a ballerina, graceful in her pirouette, one toe to the floor and her other leg curved around her in a beautiful arc as the double crescents of the axe spin in an orbit that defies the eye - hands outstretched Edward's father and brother have reached for her but the reach she has with her extended arm and the length of the handle is greater, and they have kept the Labrys in peak condition. They are beheaded in less than a second, bodies still running, blood splashing out as though to seek the light of day, heads thudding and rolling, limbs in a parody of grace, bodies collapsed.

"What have you done?" Edward cries to her, beyond appalled, sure he is hallucinating and losing his mind.

"Come now, Edward, let me tell you a story," she says, and drops the axe as though she has no further need for it.

"You don't know what I am, but I know what you are - I have been sent here. I displeased my master and was set a task as penance. I am to bring him twelve fingers of your kind, and I have already collected three. The smallest fingers from the left hand - there was a group of females in what you call Alaska, and I have already killed them. I know you are older than you appear, boy, but I am _very_ old and my master is older still. It was easy to get to you, you were so available, no defenses whatsoever, you poor thing. You were too young to know any better. There are two more of your family aren't there? I will just wait for them, and then I will be on my way."

With the third of the silver rings, Lucy slices the finger she wants from each of his parents and siblings while he watches, aghast, sick to the bone, unable to act.

"I have to kill you for what you have done," he says slowly and she looks up at him.

"No, Edward, I have to kill _you_," she assures him. "You live too long, you feed on blood, you are dangerous to humanity, you are unnatural, I will kill you and find two others to end, and I will have fulfilled my obligation, and rid the world of twelve menaces at the same time. All's well that ends well."

"No, no," he groans, head in his hands, almost wailing. "What are you?"

"Never mind that. When are your brother and sister coming home? I've got a quota to fill," she says. She is unperturbed by what she has done, by the bodies on the floor, and she tucks the four fingers into a little pouch on a thong around her neck.

"You would wipe out my family. Kill me," Edward says, pulling aside the neck of his t-shirt, offering himself to her. She takes a sword from the wall.

"Impatient, aren't you? I could play with you first," she quips, checking the sword for balance. "A thing well made," she says admiringly. "What's it to me, boy? Your head on my blade, or your heart? I'll be kind, because I like you. I'll let you choose your own manner of death."

Edward growls, hands up, fingers curling into the air the way he'd curl them into the scalp of someone he was trying to kill, to rip their cranial skin clear from their skull. His teeth and jaws are strong enough to cleave bone. He could actually have his tongue in her cerebrum if he wanted to, or so he assumes.

"I don't think you understand. I am the most powerful predator on this earth. I am stronger than a lion or a shark, and I am vicious," he hisses.

"It is you who doesn't understand. You are a low thing, a mutated creature, a perverse undying cannabilistic non-human fallen from grace. I am a _god_. I win," she answers with a smile, with eyes of blue fire. "We can continue this pleasant chat, or not, as I hear your doomed siblings approach. Pass me the longbow."

Edward launches himself at her but she sidesteps and snatches up both the longbow and the crossbow from the hooks they hang upon. Striding to the door she flings it wide and gazes with far sight at Edward's remaining brother and sister, approaching from a distance.

"I love archery," she says, fitting the nock of an arrow to the string of the longbow and pulling back, sighting high. The arrow is true as a laser, though more more curved if its path be drawn on a graph, and in the distance Edward's sister crumples, her brother staring in amazement at the fletched shaft protruding from her breast. He looks up and charges like a bull, a giant boy, roaring in rage, and Lucy slowly and easily takes the crossbow, discharging its deadly missile with a dreamy look of absolute pleasure.

"No," Edward whispers as the last of his family is cut down. It has taken minutes to orphan him, and this is the second time. He was orphaned years ago as well, when his biological parents died in a flu epidemic. Nature almost defeated him, and now he is broken by a god-bitch.

"Tell you what, Edward," she says, knee-deep in corpses. What was ever appealing about her? She has no heart, and all he has ever wanted is to be near a heart, to hold one in his arms, to love one. She isn't even like the Tin Man, because the Tin Man at least wanted a heart. She doesn't want to care or feel or love. She is far worse than what she has accused him of being. She flirted to tempt him, he was open and hopeful and trusting, she struck like a venomous snake and left him devastated.

"Hello? Edward? I have a list here, and apparently there are three more monsters wandering about close by who qualify for my requirements. That means I can spare you. How about it?" she interrupts his self-pity. "Look, I know that all seemed a bit rough. But really, I released them. Think of it in a positive way. They're all liberated now. They're not stuck around here any more, with the same old, same old, which would have lasted forever. Forever gets boring. Do you believe in re-incarnation? Your family are all butterflies."

He has followed her outside as she is collecting two more fingers, still explaining herself. "I answer to a pretty high authority, okay? We all have our jobs to do. We all have our destiny. It doesn't mean we have to like it. I'm sorry for knocking off your family, actually, I really am. They seemed nice. But you know, you lot are kind of a scourge, a threat to humanity and all that. Yes, I know there's a food chain and it shouldn't really matter - I mean it's not like I was sent to pick off a dozen spiders because they're fly-killers, I know it seems a bit unfair - but who's to question the gods' great purpose, huh? Let's kiss and make up."

"You're twisted," Edward chokes. "Fight me."

"No, I don't want to. You're a virgin, aren't you, boy? How about I introduce you to the pleasures of the flesh? If you like I could bite your head off during coitus like a preying mantis, but that would seem to be a pity. All that flirty stuff wasn't just acting, you know. I actually like you. I've had kings and warriors, heroes and gods, but I've never had a someone like you, and you are lovely, you know that? Even when you're this cross, you're so lovely." She is insane, and amoral.

"I'm not insane, or amoral, by the way. I know you struggle with what you are. You're the boy with a conscience. Notice I didn't draw it out, let any of them suffer? That's out of respect and consideration. If I was insane I might have enjoyed this little task, but I didn't. If I was amoral I wouldn't have felt sorry about it, but I do."

"If you're a god, what higher authority is there?" he asked, interested in spite of himself. He has never been a believer, though he believes there is a hell and it co-exists on earth, with the day-to-day and mundane. Hell is a life everlasting without love.

"Oh, there's a hierarchy. I'm very minor and actually I'm not a full god, that was a bit of an exaggeration. I'm a bit of a demi. The full gods are stronger than me, and they can boss me around. They're pretty stupid as a rule and usually you can get round them, but I thought I'd get this all sorted and earn myself a century or so of not being pestered. I can do what I like once I've finished. Why don't you come with me?"

"Come with you on a rampage to destroy my kind?" he asks bitterly.

"No, no, sweetie. Don't be so dramatic. I just need to knock off another three and fill up my gruesome little goody-bag here of unholy relics - that's quite funny, isn't it? Ha ha. You don't even need to be around for that part, because I can see it bothers you. We could meet up later. How about you come with me to meet my Dad? You'll like him. Okay, you might not. You know, you're the first sensible person I've met. All the gods and part-gods and titans and whatnot are so immature and irresponsible. I like that you're serious. Come with me and be my lover."

He rushes at her and she sidesteps him easily, despite his speed. His fist lashes out and she simply bends her back to lean out of reach. When he grasps for her with both hands though, she lets him imprison her in his arms. He hadn't expected that, and he stands gripping her hard, panting his breath onto her.

"A kiss Edward? You've been wanting to kiss me, haven't you" she asks him, and it's true, he has. Right up until she murdered his entire family, one by one. Now he wants to tear out her jugular, but he has realized she is extremely strong, possibly even stronger than he is. He holds himself back from her, stiffly.

"You're just not going to let it go, are you?" she asks sadly. "What if I come back in a decade or so? Do you think you might have gotten over it by then?

"Kill me," he says.

"Oh, it's such a _waste_! I really don't want to! And it means I've got to spare one of these other bloodsuckers, and how am I going to choose which one? I couldn't just kill them all to make everything easier because I can't go back with an extra finger. And if I don't cut the finger off and take it away the stupid creature will just come back to life, and it will just chase me for ages and my master will find out and things will get really complicated and then I'll be in trouble for the next five hundred years..."

"Wait a minute - what did you just say?" he asks.

"Oh, whoops. Slip of the tongue. Nothing. Ignore me, I'm raving."

His fingers move to her chin and pull her face to his. Their noses are almost touching. "You can reattach the fingers and bring the bodies back to life?" he asks quietly, the bodies around still twitching - they've only been dead for minutes.

"Yes, as long as all the pieces are still intact they can be re-animated. My master wants the fingers so he can burn them, because that means the vampires will be destroyed forever. But if I don't give him this bunch that I've already collected I'll have to start all over again. And there are no more vampires in America. I'd have to go all the way to Europe," she says in a slightly whiney voice, wrinkling her pretty nose. "It could take months!"

He's not despairing any more and the fact that she is so strong and dangerous excites him. She can sense his change in a flash and presses her body against his. "I've got an idea," she says.

"So have I," he answers, and he is slow to smile, but her smile encourages him. They have the same idea.

She opens her little pouch and pulls out the finger collection. "Do you know which is which?" she asks, "Because I wouldn't have a clue. I kind of didn't pay attention."

He does know, and he goes around to each of the bodies, holding the fingers in place. Miraculously, as he holds them the skin of the severed stump moves and reaches out to the skin on the finger, and nerves and fibers suck towards each other, and as the re-joining is complete, his family members sit up and look about them, dazed and blinking.

"What the _fuck_ just happened?" his eldest brother demands.

"Nothing much. Everything's okay. Lucy and I are going on a little holiday to Europe for six months or so. We'll see you when we get back," Edward says, very glad to have them all again, even though he is bidding them an immediate farewell.

"Yes, it was lovely to meet you," Lucy says. "Bye now."

"But this is very sudden! Why are you going?" his mother asks, concerned as only a mother can be.

"It's sort of a honeymoon, only without the wedding first," Lucy smiles, and she takes Edward's hand. They all see this action, see the quick look he gives her, and all of them beam with sudden delight except his grouchy older sister who can never be pleased.

"Ah, well, enjoy yourselves," his father says, his hope that his son has finally partnered outweighing any misgivings.

You wouldn't believe how long it can take a demigod and her vampire lover to track and kill nine bloodsuckers in Europe, even with preternatural senses and super strength. After six months they haven't caught any.

"Lucy, was there any time set on this - ah - task of yours? Is your master in any sort of a hurry?" Edward asks in a hotel room overlooking the Seine, his pretty goddess as naked as he is while the gargoyles of Notre Dame keep watch. She has told him all their names - she knew them before their petrification.

"Mmm? No, come closer, lover, there's no hurry at all," Lucy smiles, slowly, slowly. She doesn't call him boy anymore. "We'll get around to it."

//**********//

You're supposed to kill Cullens for this challenge, I know, but the rules didn't say it had to be permanent! So I came up with a nice bloodbath and then resurrection.


End file.
